


winterchild

by elysiumwaits



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BAMF Stiles, Based on a Fairytale, Beauty and the Beast Elements, East of the Sun and West of the Moon Elements, Full Shift Werewolves, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mates Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Steter Secret Santa 2019
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21883768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: Stiles follows the path his mother laid out for him so long ago. Beyond the dark of the northern forest, where only the freezing north wind blows, he finds the Wolves of the Winter Moon.--Complete, just editing and posting over the next few days.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 17
Kudos: 72
Collections: Steter Secret Santa 2019





	winterchild

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambersagen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambersagen/gifts).



> This fic was lightly inspired by the Norwegian folk tale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” It’s very Beauty and the Beast, and is honestly just a lovely folk tale, so if you get the chance, you should read an adaptation! I took the bare bones of it and created my own spin, so I hope you like it. I saw the things you liked, and I kind of went "oh, I can do something with sparkly, hurt/comfort, and animal transformations!" and then some feverish writing nights and research later, this was born.
> 
> Some of the tags are for parts to be posted in a couple of days, and I will add things as they come to me, but there are no major warnings to look out for here.
> 
> Stiles’ roots here are Polish, but the rest of it is Scandinavian (or as close as I could get, considering it’s a generic wintery fantasy setting). Tarpans were the Eurasian wild horse, now extinct, but to get an idea of what Zorza might have looked like, you can take a look at a Przewalski's horse (wild, like tarpans) or a heck horse (domesticated). There's a lot of little bits of research I've done through the whole thing, if anyone's interested I'll gather it all at the end notes in the very end of the fourth and final chapter.
> 
> The Polish that’s in here was very helpfully translated into actual Polish by Aenya, without whom Zorza would have been named “bald spot” due to Google Translate being as awful as ever. The exact translations of what Stiles says can be found in the end notes of each chapter, and I've added English next to the Polish dialogue that's the gist of what he's saying.
> 
> Written for Steter Secret Santa.

“Tell me the story.” It’s Stiles’ seventh winter, and it seems to him that he’ll never be warm again. The fire in the hearth of their little cabin only does so much, and the furs and blankets that they have are mostly wrapped around his mother in an effort to keep her as warm as possible. 

She’s pale, like the snow outside, and her dark hair is wispy where it falls around her face. She seems so faded, as though when the summer left it took her color with it. 

His parents don’t know that Stiles heard the healers talking when he was supposed to be in bed, and that he knows that his mother likely won’t survive the harsh winter months. His father works and hunts, and Stiles spends his days wrapping his mother in warm furs and stoking the fire, even as he knows that it won’t save her.

“Your father will be home soon,” his mother says. She’s wrong - the sun is only now setting, and Stiles’ father comes home when the candles burn low into the night, but his mother doesn’t seem to track the passage of time well anymore, sleeps more hours than she spends awake. “I’m very tired, dear heart.”

“Tell me quickly, then,” Stiles replies. This is their routine, now, even if his mother may not recall it from one day to the next. Their secret, shared between the two of them. He worries every day that this will be the last night he will hear the story from her, and that he will be the one to have to remember it, alone.

His mother smiles, and her eyes light for a moment, dance in the warmth of the fire. “Just once,” she says, and leans in to share their secret once more. “Beyond the dark of the northern forest, where only the freezing north wind blows, stands an ancient palace among the ice and snow. And that, dear one, is where you’ll find the Wolves of the Winter Moon...”

The winter wind bites at Stiles’ cheeks. The cold seeps through his cloak and coat both, seems to ghost between the very fibers of the scarf he wears wrapped around his neck and head, covering as much of his face as he can. It feels as though it blows  _ through _ him, as though the snow that’s falling is settling onto his very bones like it did on the bare branches of the trees that lined the forest path, until he lost it.

“ _ Już chyba niedaleko.  _ It can’t be too much farther,” Stiles tells  Zorza , and the tarpan tosses her head as if to share in Stiles’ frustration. She probably does, understands nearly everything Stiles says, to an unnatural point sometimes. “If it exists. It has to exist, right? The ring is real.”

He would be far more comfortable if he were riding, but  Zorza is already carrying a heavy load, as sturdy as she is. Scott is nothing but dead weight, after all, wrapped as warmly as Stiles can manage and unceremoniously tied so that he doesn’t fall off into the snow. Stiles thinks Scott will forgive him for the indignity of it, in the long run.

Provided they survive, of course.

He’s left the lands that he actually knows behind him, and now Stiles is surrounded by an unforgiving winter. He would have thought that the trees here - evergreens instead of the bleak, naked white oaks he knows - would somehow ease the chill, maybe slow the wind. The wind only seems to be harsher as he goes, as though it’s trying to convince him to turn back, and Stiles is cold. It’s unpleasant at best, and dangerous at worst, as the long shadows that Stiles can see mean that night is fast approaching.

“ Zorza ,” Stiles murmurs against the wind. “ _ Będziemy w niezłych opałach, jeśli to tylko bajka.  _ We’re in trouble if it doesn’t exist.”

It’s been two days. They’ve no doubt lost the hunters, because only the foolish or the suicidal venture this far north in the dead of winter, but Stiles knows that if he doesn’t find shelter soon, they’ll freeze to death, even with the furnace that Scott’s become as the night of the full moon draws closer. And honestly, even if they  _ do _ survive another night, huddled between the three of them with a fire Stiles  _ might _ be able to make out of sheer will and what’s left of his drained magic inside him… the full moon is tomorrow night, and Scott is  _ untethered _ , mumbling and blue-eyed and feverish on  Zorza’s back as Stiles leads her against the wind, stepping high in the snow. 

Stiles knows that this is a desperate reach, built on hope, a ring, and an old folk story his mother used to tell him before she died. So if it  _ doesn’t _ exist, they’ll die - whether it’s Stiles first when Scott’s transformation sets in, whether they freeze to death together overnight, whether they go back to where the hunters know their faces.

The shadows grow long as the sun sets. Stiles hates the winter months because the days are so short, and he hates them even more now.  Zorza huffs out as he stops to breathe, turning his face into her neck just to try and catch his breath before the wind steals it from his chest. Her shaggy coat is warm, and he wants so badly to be back home in his little cabin. There is no home, though, no little cabin anymore, and no going back.

A howl breaks through the air. Stiles tightens his hold on the lead, one gloved hand coming up to rest on  Zorza’s neck. “ _ Prrr!  _ It’s alright! It’s alright,” he says, hoping she doesn’t startle enough to try and buck Scott off, enough to take off running and leave him here, alone and cold in the winter forest. “ Zorza , it’s alright, they’re not close. The wind carries the howls.  _ Nic się nie bój, nie są blisko. Tylko wiatr z daleka wycie niesie _ ,” he lies. A fourth option for death, then, if Stiles’ foolish plan doesn’t work - dinner for wolves.

How ironic.

“ _ Chodź, idziemy dalej.  _ Come on.” Stiles sets off again, tucks the hand he’s not using to hold the lead into his cloak in an effort to keep it warm. The scarf he’s wrapped around his head has slipped from his forehead a little, but he doesn’t dare move either hand to mess with it, and doesn’t dare stop again. 

He finally breaks through the tree line, on the other side of the forest.  _ Beyond the dark of the northern forest, where only the freezing north wind blows _ . 

There’s nothing there. 

Night has fallen, crept in as quickly as it ever does in the winter. Stiles stops with a sob that he can see in the winter’s chill, and leans heavy with guilt and despair against  Zorza’s warm side . He’s trying to take comfort in the familiarity of her, but he’s so very cold, and he’s so very tired, and he’s going to die here in snow and ice. He can hear Scott mumbling something under the furs even if he can’t catch the words. Behind him, the dark of the taiga forest. Before him, nothing but the wide, white expanse of the tundra.

The wind is better here, inexplicably. Where it had been harsh and unforgiving in the forest, it’s barely a breeze here, and there is no snow falling from the sky. Just dancing where the breeze carries it, swirls as far as the eye can see.

He should have known. Only the foolish or the suicidal venture into or beyond the northern forest, after all. Stiles isn’t sure which he is now. Maybe both.

The wolf howls again, and this time another answers, and another. Closer than before, too close.  Zorza shifts uneasily, and Stiles wants to cry even as he knows the tears will freeze on his cheeks and lashes. He’s glad for the clear sky, for the stars that shine above and the distant dancing of the northern lights in the sky. He could see them from his home, from the little cabin that no longer stands, and as Stiles watches instead of looking for the wolves, he thinks that maybe this isn’t too terrible of a place to die.

“You’re a long way from home, winterchild.”

If Stiles weren’t so slow with the cold, if his body weren’t weighed down with the weight of the ice on his bones, he’d whip around. As it is, he turns his head, grips tight to the lead as  Zorza shifts uneasily. A few feet away, far closer than Stiles would have thought, stands a man. He would blend in with the dark, velvet sky behind him, the deep midnight blue of the winter cloak he wears fading against the night sky, if it weren’t for the way he seems to be a void where the stars and the lights don’t shine, silhouetted instead of a part of it. The moon is nearly full, offers its own light to the bright of the winter sky, light glancing off the snow and ice, and illuminates the man so that Stiles can see him clearly even in the night.

He’s seemingly unbothered by the cold, with the hood of his cloak down and only a thin scarf tucked underneath it, hands bare and still at his sides. There’s something that has the potential to become a smirk on his face - not quite a smile but not quite mocking either. Waiting, like a predator, with blue eyes sparkling in the night, as though expecting Stiles to lunge or run. There are no howls coming from the forest now, but Stiles hears them all the same.

No one has called Stiles a winterchild since his mother died at the end of his seventh winter, thirteen years ago. No one has been able to recognize the magic that swirls like a snow squall deep in his soul. Not even his father knew. Not even Scott knows. 

But this stranger has seen it. Sensed it. 

“You’re  _ real _ ,” Stiles breathes out.

The stranger studies him, and his lips curve into a full smile instead of twisting into a mean smirk. It’s not what he expected Stiles to say, that much is clear, and Stiles thinks he shouldn’t have been able to hear it at all with the scarf on his face. “As real as anything is, I suppose.”

“ Zorza ,” Stiles says, turns his head back to the tarpan and runs a soothing hand down her side. “ _ Prrr! Spokojnie. Wszystko w porządku.  _ Stay. It’s alright.” She snorts, and he takes it as assent, drops the lead to strip off his glove and fumble with the saddlebags underneath Scott’s feverish body. “He’s exactly who we’re looking for.”

“You’re looking for me? Color me intrigued,” the man says. “It’s rare I have visitors, even rarer they come without warning. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Stiles finds what he’s looking for, pulls it from the saddle bag and carefully tucks the furs back around Scott, who murmurs something pained and scared, shifting.

“And you’re not alone.” The man sounds harder but still curious. Annoyed, probably, that he could sense Stiles and not Scott. “It’s very rude to shield them from me like that. Who else have you brought to my lands, winterchild?” 

“Sorry,” Stiles says, turning away from Zorza to face the man once more. The silver should be chilly against Stiles’ skin, but he can barely feel it with as numb as his hands are from the biting cold. The only thing standing between him and frostbite now is the little magic that he has leftover from working to shield Scott as he has. “I had to hide him from the hunters.” He’s shivering, but he manages to get the words out strong enough. 

Stiles starts to trudge forward through the snow, strips off his other glove with his teeth and shoves it into the pocket of his cloak. The air is frigid when it hits his face as he pulls the scarf away, drops the hood of the cloak to show his face. He remembers what his mother told him so many years ago, remembers that he’s got to prove himself strong enough, that he’s got to show himself to be a child of the winter lights, if he’s to actually find help here. Stiles knows he looks rough in comparison to the striking man in velvet midnight with his fur trimmed cloak, but he also knows that this man can see beyond the snow-dusted fur and leather that Stiles wears, beyond the thick scarf of mismatched yarn.

The man makes no move to meet Stiles, but his eyes are sharp and bright, blue like the summer sky instead of like this dark winter, when the sun hangs in the sky for only a few short hours. That curious, almost  _ disbelieving _ smile still sits on his face, and Stiles will admit in the privacy of his own head that the disbelief spurs him on more than anything else - he is who he’s always been. 

“I need help,” Stiles says, tries so hard to keep his voice steady even as he shakes from the chill of the winter that’s sunk into his very soul. “You have to help me.”

“There is nothing here. Not even for one such as you.” The man sounds almost disappointed. “It was foolish of you to come.”

Stiles grits his teeth, takes the last few steps until he’s standing in front of the stranger, scarf in one hand and silver in the other, bare to the winter and those striking blue eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says, and now his voice shakes as he can’t suppress the shivering. “My friend, he’s like you. Bitten, though, not… not born like you were.”

The smile falls from the man’s face as Stiles speaks, replaced by cold-iron, even as his eyes glitter like the snow and the stars. “And what would someone like  _ you _ know of me and mine? I owe you nothing, you don’t belong here.” 

“I _do_ belong here,” Stiles snaps. He _is_ strong enough, damn it, he’ll will it into existence or die trying. “If I wasn’t, the wind would have turned me back. I would have never made it out of the forest, and you know it.” He holds his hand out, palm up. “The promise was already made. You may be a Child of the Winter Moon, wolf, but _I_ am a child of the winter herself, I have the magic of northern lights and the snow, and _you._ _Will._ _Help. Me!_ ”

It’s his mother’s ring, emeralds set into the silver wolf’s eyes, held in the center of his shaking palm. Stiles doesn’t dare look away from the man’s - from the  _ wolf’s _ face, watches the shock and surprise flit across his handsome features before those blue, blue eyes find Stiles’ gaze once more. 

“Aren’t you full of surprises,” the wolf murmurs, and this time his smile is full of teeth. “Not a visitor, but a  _ homecoming _ , like the North Wind has blown you in herself. So it is, then, a promise kept.” He reaches out, covers Stiles’ palm with his own, and his hand burns with warmth where it touches Stiles’ skin. His smile only broadens at Stiles’ sharp inhalation. “I am at your service, oh mighty child of the winter herself.”

“Stiles.” The ring warms between their skin. “My name is Stiles.”

The man doesn’t release his hand, studies him for a moment, eyes searching. Stiles doesn’t look away, not even when the man’s eyes flash a brilliant, unnatural red. “Stiles,” he says, an indulgence. “I am at your service. Stiles.”

Stiles holds fast when the man goes to pull away and take the ring with him. “Your name.” It’s not a question.

The wolf regards him again. “You can call me-”

“No.” Stiles doesn’t let go, and his teeth may not be as sharp as this wolf’s, but he’s got the icy chill of winter running through his veins. “Your  _ name _ , wolf.” 

“Names have a lot of power,” the wolf says. He could break the hold Stiles has on his hand easily enough.

Stiles swallows. “I’m aware. I gave you mine, now you give me yours.”

For a moment, he’s not sure the wolf will agree. For a moment, he thinks he’s more likely to be turned away, old promises be damned.

“My name is Peter,” the wolf finally says. “And you’re much too clever for your own good.”

This time, when the hand pulls away from his own, Stiles lets it go. For the first time, he drops his gaze, watches as the wolf - as  _ Peter _ slips the ring onto his own finger. It’s strange, how he didn’t even know that the ring existed until a short while ago, yet he’s still sad for it to go. One last piece of his mother, lost to him forever.

It will be worth it. It has to be worth it.

“My friend,” Stiles says, swallows as the cold seems to hit him once more. “My brother, Scott, he was bitten. By a wolf, a moon child. It’s dead now, it had… gone mad, I think. He’s untethered, and the full moon is-”

“I know when the full moon is,” Peter cuts in. “And what do you want me to do, exactly? Take him in? Tie him to me with a pack-bond?” All teeth in his smile, sharp and wolfish. “And what do I get out of this?”

Stiles stares at him for a moment, confused. “The promise-”

“Was to help  _ you _ . There was no promise made for him.” The ring shines on Peter’s finger. “You, I will gladly take with me. Your horse too. But him, you’ll have to bargain for.”

“You son of a bitch.” The curse is out before Stiles can catch it. “You tricky bastard.” Peter just smiles. Stiles swallows, grits his teeth and glances away to where Zorza still stands, Scott on her back. “Fine,” he snaps, looks back at Peter. “What do you want?”

“A promise of my own.” Peter’s eyes flash red again. “I’ll take him into my pack, give him the tether. But only for as long as you remain here, with me. With my pack.”

Stiles knows the story. Beyond the dark of the northern forest, where only the freezing north wind blows, live the Wolves of the Winter Moon. 

He’s here, beyond the forest with the north wind chilling his bones. Before him stands a Wolf of the Winter Moon. His mother’s voice rings in his head: “ _ Never promise them anything, dear one. Never stay. The wolves there will keep you forever if you let them _ .” 

If he turns back, Scott will die, alone and howling in the unfamiliarity of the taiga forest, underneath the full moon.

“I promise,” Stiles breathes, and the wolf smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Polish translations:
> 
> _“Już chyba niedaleko.”_ \- "(I think) It's not far anymore."  
>  _“Będziemy w niezłych opałach, jeśli to tylko bajka."_ \- "We'll be in hot water if it's just a fairytale."  
>  _“Nic się nie bój, nie są blisko. Tylko wiatr z daleka wycie niesie.”_ \- "Don't worry, they're not close. (It's) Just the wind that carries the howling from far away."  
>  _“Chodź, idziemy dalej."_ \- "Come on, we'll keep going/moving."  
>  _“Prrr! Spokojnie. Wszystko w porządku.”_ \- "(Halt) Be calm. Everything's alright."


End file.
